GOVERNMENT HAS ACCUSED the International Monetary Fund (IMF) of being austerity-driven and of not listening, as the administration sticks to its five-year strategy to keep the Barbados economy on an even keel.
Minister of Finance Chris Sinckler told the SATURDAY SUN yesterday the view by IMF deputy division chief Therese Turner-Jones that Barbados needed to take quick, corrective action in order to turn around the struggling economy was typical of the Fund’s one-size-fits-all prescription.
“The [IMF] view is nothing new, just as their one-size-fits-all prescription for all economies irrespective of nature, size or circumstance, has not changed in half a century. It’s the same excessive pro-cyclical austerity-driven programme that wrecked several economies across the world and devastated millions of lives,” the minister said in response to Washington-based Turner-Jones’ comments in Trinidad during a high-level forum on low growth and high debt in the region.
Sinckler argued that the present strategy, to reduce Barbados’ debt-to-gross domestic product ratio over five years, had met its targets and kept the economy stable.
